Stats are down but crunched WUs are still being credited. Others may have slacked off because they don't see results, so this is an opportunity for us.

Version 0.5.0 has a bug if your Username has a space in it (like mine). I'm hoping there is a work-around (editing some files to surround name with quotes). If anyone confirms this before I can, post here pls.

I feel bad about letting my Dimes output slip, but my ISP got stricter with their caps and it got kind of difficult to remember to switch off all my my VMs when peak times began. I am looking to switch ISP however, so I may return in force yet.

I'll see if I can update my VM to the latest version of Dimes, because mine owned all for size.

No it doesn't add up to very much at all, but my problem was that constant round the clock usage was pushing me into a different user profile and I got throttled badly because of it. When my 8 Mb/s line was giving me only ISDN speeds, it began to get annoying.

I set this up on a couple of machines. The client says "blocked" on both but they're getting points so must be working. Am also running MJ-12. How much bandwidth/month does the Dimes client use (have Qworst DSL, limited to 200GB/month)?Set Delay to 15, FTR to 51, anything else to do?

I've got 9 clients going, seems very well behaved so far. Backed off a bit on MJ-12 though. Hopefully this won't raise any red flags at Qworst. It would be nice if there was a MB usage meter like the MJ-12 client has.

I'm up to 11 clients and that's everything I've got. It's nice that this project runs on the machines with almost no effect on any of the other projects or on the internet speed. If I had known I would have started running Dimes much earlier.

Finally got around to getting VMWare Server 2.0 installed on a crunching box today. I moved the four WinXP VMs over to it but for some reason when I upgrade VMWare tools the OS does not install any of the drivers. O well, the old VMWare tools seems to work fine, at least the driver for the NIC. Now I just need to get VMWare working on my desktop again. Damn network setting got all screwed up.

Been playing around with Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs inside of a VMWare Server 2.0 tonight. MS really did this right. I installed the OS with no extras, including no IE. Installed IE 8 RTM, Java 6.12 and netDIMES 5.0. My test VM, which I have 192MB of RAM, is currently using a meager 46MB of that running DIMES. This means I should be able to reduce the memory footprint down to 64MB and not suffer any hdd thrashing after the OS is done booting. I don't think I will go that far as the box has 2GB so 128 will be what I end up using.

So I have a small problem and thought I would ask here before bugging people over at the dimes forum.

A very verrrry long time ago I had a agent named 'Server'. For reasons that I do not know this agent no longer shows up on my list of agents. My current server is using the agent_15 tag and I just reinstalled the OS. Now when I just ran the Dimes setup 'Server' is not one of the available agents as expected. So I select 'Agent_15' and off I go. I figured I would try to change the name of the agent in the properties but when I put in 'Server; I get an error back saying that I already have an agent with this name.

Is your 64MB VM available for team distribution?Right now I'm only running one instance/box and that VM would help me crank up production.If so I would probably grab the 128MB one too in case the smaller one turned out to be too small.

Jammy, there is a new client for SoB. You may want to head over to the SoB thread and get the link. I know that they also redid the stats to make the stats more representative. I don't know all of the details.

If you're having problems with the DIMES installer, try downloading the client installer again from here and reinstalling. I had a few problems initially that required a reinstall to fix. Good luck!

Originally posted by Calphor:Jammy, there is a new client for SoB. You may want to head over to the SoB thread and get the link. I know that they also redid the stats to make the stats more representative. I don't know all of the details.

If you're having problems with the DIMES installer, try downloading the client installer again from here and reinstalling. I had a few problems initially that required a reinstall to fix. Good luck!

Thanks Calphor but I will keep trying with DIMES. I do not like GIMPS and I haven't ever since I first tried it nearly 6 years ago. It is not fun to run like other DC's.

Been playing around with Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs again. This time I set up a 1GB partition and did not install Internet Explorer. With just XP, Java 1.5.0.17 and DIMES 5.0 the whole thing is taking up a whopping 710MB of space.

I should get a few of these deployed tonight on a box with a new install of VMWare Server. Maybe an additional six VMs.

Right now I got one set up just about the way I want it. It has DIMES running as a service and sitting at the logon screen. Currently the VM is pulling a whopping 11MB of RAM. I assume DIMES is running but I will not know for sure until the stats update as I don't want to logon and push the RAM usage up.

Can someone give me the Idiot's Guide to running this? I use mainly Linux command line boxes with no GUI - I couldn't figure out how to get registered so I forwarded and X connection across the network and managed to create and account, and join the team (I think).

How can I maximize the output? Bandwidth it not an issue, but I would like to understand how to tune this better. My connection is pretty good (as shown from MJ12), I read in some of the other threads about people using VMs... why? I really don't want to run this on 20 different machines, I'd prefer to maximize its output on 1 or 2 machines. The machine I put this on has the bandwidth of around 20Mbit during off hours, and about 2Mbit during peak hours.

Originally posted by Otterz:Can someone give me the Idiot's Guide to running this? I use mainly Linux command line boxes with no GUI - I couldn't figure out how to get registered so I forwarded and X connection across the network and managed to create and account, and join the team (I think).

How can I maximize the output? Bandwidth it not an issue, but I would like to understand how to tune this better. My connection is pretty good (as shown from MJ12), I read in some of the other threads about people using VMs... why? I really don't want to run this on 20 different machines, I'd prefer to maximize its output on 1 or 2 machines. The machine I put this on has the bandwidth of around 20Mbit during off hours, and about 2Mbit during peak hours.

The biggest tweak is to go into the settings and set the time between pings to the minimum 15 seconds. The reason for the VMs is that you can only setup one instance of the client on a machine. This limits the maximum effective score per "machine." The client uses very little bandwidth and CPU time, so if you setup multiple VMs on a machine you can get massive production from a single computer. There have been a few VM setups that have been circulated, I may have one that I have saved. If you are interested, PM me and I'll see if I can dig it up.

Q1)Is there a way to handle the configuration without loading a GUI? Most of my boxes don't have any graphical environment (no X windows). If this thing uses little resources, I can probably cook up a machine that can handle 30-40 small VMs (but with minimal CPU power) - but I'd need a way to initially setup their configs without using a GUI

Q2)What OS do people prefer for running the VMs? By default I always go CentOS, but have Debian stuff laying around as well.

Q3)Lets say I setup 20 VMs, and set them at Max bandwidth (51 kbps right?), what is the effective bandwidth it is going to use? 1Mbit? Or does it not really use that much at all.

Q4)UDP or ICMP?

Q5)What is Measurement Rate Range (should I set this high or low?)

Sorry for the barrage of questions, but they don't have much in terms of documentation.

Originally posted by Otterz:How is it that people's scores keep going up, but the server hasn't been accessible. I am just wondering if it is worth the trouble to setup 100 vms if the project isn't going to keep them producing.

It happens all the time, weekends most of all. Scores seem to be lower during these periods though.

quote:

Also what is the average performance per machine? Their forums made it sound like 3-4.5k, but I seem to be getting significantly less (I changed by speed to 51, and time between tests to 15).

I have 14 clients running. They do seem to stop for no apparent reason now and then. The average per machine is a little over 4k/day for the last week. When everything is running optimally they get closer to 5k/day. Some score better than others. In fact the older boxes seem to be the fastest in Dimes. I don't know why.